


Dull Knives

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Break Up, Figurative Language, M/M, midokise week 2k15
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 10:12:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4300839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And Kise could make every metaphor and euphemism and simile in the world and it wouldn’t be enough to stop the fact that things are slowly and quietly changing between him and Midorima, that their relationship is collapsing in upon itself in a steady state of semi-controlled demolition, and that all they can do at this point is watch it go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dull Knives

**Author's Note:**

> midokise week day 3: angst

Some relationships tear themselves apart from the inside as if they’re possessed by something, as if something’s tearing through them until it reaches the skin with a dull knife, slow and gruesome and painful enough to kill from blood loss and nerve damage rather than a slice through something in and of itself terribly vital, messy and long and obvious, the train wreck that everyone tries very hard to avoid. Some relationships do go with the vitals, loud and quick like firecrackers released into the air, a sudden jolt of energy as everything flies out from underneath. And some relationships dissipate quiet and slow like morning fog, rising into the air until no one’s sure they were there in the first place, including the people involved and right in the thick of it—all they remember is little snatches of the feelings here and there, but they let it all die because it’s a foregone conclusion.

And Kise could make every metaphor and euphemism and simile in the world and it wouldn’t be enough to stop the fact that things are slowly and quietly changing between him and Midorima, that their relationship is collapsing in upon itself in a steady state of semi-controlled demolition, and that all they can do at this point is watch it go. There was a time when Kise had been confident that he and Midorima were both too strong and stubborn to let this happen, but he’d been willfully ignoring the parts of them that are harder to paint in a positive light, Midorima’s steadfast denial of things that are clearly going on around him and Kise’s tendency to grow bored with things and avoid trying. And the way they are it’s easy for it to start slow like peeling paint at the edges until they’re left with a wall rotting away that Midorima refuses to see and Kise hasn’t bothered to look at.

And of course it started out slow, but once it got to a certain point, once it went beyond a shadow (the kind of shadow cast by a cheap table lamp, directly underneath itself like a tiny dark ring, a stain almost completely covered) of a doubt it had already hit the breakpoint like a wave whose base hits the ocean floor and begins to cascade downward in a slow hiss, inaudible until it becomes a roar. It’s impossible to say when it had started, not because Kise can’t remember that far back in great detail but because it can’t be pinpointed, when the door had locked behind them from the outside and left them stranded. And he doesn’t want to sift through the memories like that anyway; he doesn’t care enough to anymore. Everything about this relationship has become listless and limp and boring like lettuce left in the refrigerator too long, and he can’t sit still and think about it long enough to make sense of it.

There’s still basketball and that, at least, is still somewhat interesting with Midorima, the thud of sneakers and the orange ball against the blacktop like an avalanche in their own private mountain range, except it doesn’t feel as secluded as it once did; the spark from their eyes meeting and the challenge of playing one another over and over again is gone—it’s one more thing that this relationship has killed, dragged along with it to the grave, one more thing that Kise still cares enough about to briefly mourn for. Basketball is basketball; Midorima is still a more-than-worthy opponent; they still match each other but it’s become too predictable, a facsimile of a battle that has tired itself out like a worn-out pair of high tops sitting in the back of Kise’s closet.

But there’s no character to it; it’s like soda gone flat or a large can of beer warmed to room temperature or bread on the verge of getting too stale to eat, more than unsatisfactory but not quite disgusting yet. It’s just something Kise really doesn’t care about; he doesn’t care enough even to conjure up memories of the way things were, the creases in Midorima’s forehead when he’d be solving a particularly hard problem or trying to decipher the meaning of his horoscope, the way his fingers looked pushing up his glasses, or his dry lips against Kise’s skin. Kise remembers vaguely being affected by those things, that those things were important, but he doesn’t really remember what they were like and when Midorima does them now, trying in vain like a crab in a fish market scrambling around on the ice before it’s picked up for slaughter, Kise doesn’t pay enough attention to lock them in his mind.

This kind of dull apathy has settled itself in Kise the way it had settled itself in when they were in middle school, gradually and in a way that had seemed back then to be inevitable (and even now, when Kise retraces those steps, he can’t find a way it could have been prevented with the circumstances and knowledge that they had), only then he had had Midorima as a distraction, his disdainful words and the cutting of his voice, even as it had still cracked from high to low like a microphone picking up too much feedback, and his features emerging from the baby fat in his face like his old self had melted away and left something else behind—and that Kise had had to watch.

But now, even though the harsh words burn like chili oil in his throat, it’s too little feeling and far too late to turn back, to save this thing. They can try all they want—Midorima can try all he wants (which Kise would bet isn’t that much at all)—but they’re never going to get anywhere, stuck in this stalled car where the only way out is to leave through separate doors and go their separate ways. And the only way to unlock the doors is to say what needs to be said, to cut through with words like a dull knife.


End file.
